


unwritten

by withoutwords



Category: Hit the Floor (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, First Time, Getting Together, M/M, Minor Character Death, Some homophobia from others, Some internalised homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-22 22:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12492560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withoutwords/pseuds/withoutwords
Summary: Jude feels nothing, when it happens. He’s ten years and eleven months old and he wakes up one morning to see the name Gideon across the inside of his wrist; sharp and blocky and small.





	unwritten

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the anonymous prompt, soulmate AU. I haven’t written these two in ages, so I hope it’s okay! Also it’s important to note that all the drama that happened in the show won’t really happen in this, haha. Thank you, anon!

Jude feels nothing, when it happens. He’s ten years and eleven months old and he wakes up one morning to see the name _Gideon_ across the inside of his wrist; sharp and blocky and small. He presses his thumb to it, gentle at first, before he’s scrubbing and scrubbing trying to make it come off.

“Jude, honey,” his mum says from her throat, falling onto the bed next to him and cradling him in her arms. “What, what is it?”

“This,” he tells her, crying, proffering the mark to her. It’s red and raw now from where his fingernails were dug in – but it’s still there as black and bold as ever. “Look.”

“Oh, sweetheart. We’ve talked about soul marks. You knew this was going to happen.”

“But it – it’s a boy’s name, isn’t it? Gideon’s a boy’s name.”

His mom pulls him in tighter, and takes his wrist in one hand. Her palm is cool and loving against it, her fingers gentle and grounding around his arm. Jude takes a breath. “That doesn’t matter. None of that matters.”

“Can I cover it up? Just until – just so I can…”

“You can do whatever you want.”

*

Jude’s mom had the name _Michael_ twisted long across her wrist, pale and fractured and nothing like Jude’s. She’d try to tell him the story, about a young love, but she could never seem to get to the end. It was sad, probably, tragic, and she wanted to protect him from the truth.

She was never very good at truths.

“What about my dad?” he would ask. “Did he have your name on his wrist?”

“He didn’t have any one’s name,” she told him, always clipped and distracted. “He didn’t believe in it.”

“In what? Love?”

His mom would never answer.

*

Jude’s worn a wristband every day of his life. Through high school, through college, often met with a barrage of knowing looks and teasing questions. It was a simple black thing, leather and light, and he wore a watch over it too, as if that might help. It didn’t.

Why bother, people asked, if he wasn't rich or famous? Didn't he want to know his soulmate? Didn't he want true love.

Jude didn’t know what he wanted. He went through boys, girls, sometimes both at the same time, until he found himself on a couch somewhere in Crescent City and no memory of the night before. He gave it up.

He was gay, and his soulmate was Gideon, and that would happen when it happened.

Or it wouldn’t happen at all.

*

Jude’s mom’s name was Kathryn. She dies on a Thursday, tucked up in her bed with flowers in her hair. Jude wonders what happens to her soulmate’s wrist, if he’s still alive. Does her name just disappear, too, like the rest of her?

(And do their souls meet somewhere else, in another time?)

Jude goes to a tattoo parlour, just a little drunk, and gets _Kathryn_ inked across his ribs. He cries until it heals, days and days of tears, then he remembers one of the last things she said to him, _don't waste it_ , with a smile. 

When he's done with crying, Jude books a flight to Los Angeles to go find Oscar Kinkade.

*

Jude’s not stupid. The last time he saw his father he was eight years old watching the flickering taillights of Oscar’s car disappear. He told his friends he was away on business, off on adventures, making lots of money – which was never really a lie, come to think of it.

He just never told them the part where he wasn’t coming back.

It’s not hard working his way into the _Devil’s_. To convince Oscar that having his son on board would be good PR. He spins a lot of stories about what he’s doing there – he needs work, he needs the experience, he’ll take whatever he can get, he doesn’t care. Oscar’s standoffish and unsure but he accepts it for what it is. And Jude doesn’t push.

He’s not going to tell the father that abandoned him that he’s here to reconnect.

That he has no home, and no family, and Oscar is all he has left.

“You’re Oscar Kinkade’s son?” The new player Jude had to go rescue from Ohio looks more like a porn star than an athlete. He’s all slicked back hair and smug squinting and Jude’s gotta wonder why he finds that so attractive. “Seriously?”

“I look like my mom.”

“Right.” He – Zero – fiddles with the band on his wrist, pulling at it just enough that Jude catches a flicker of black. “How long have you been with the team?”

“About three months.”

“Three months,” he repeats, nodding slowly. “Wow. It’s nice to know I’m so important to the team that they send a rookie.”

Jude’s hand tightens around the steering wheel of his car. He tries not to laugh at the irony of it all – that he spent three years in college getting a Business degree just so he could baby-sit a basketball player. His mom would tell him to stop being so proud. “Actually, they sent the _owner’s son_.”

“Right,” Zero agrees, a little quieter now. “ _Jude_.”

*

Jude’s never met a woman like Lionel. She’s got a calculated rage that burns deep; a taste for things Jude is only now beginning to understand. With her help. He was raised on very little, and encouraged to want for nothing, but seeing how the other half lives is nothing if not tempting.

For years he searched for love and belonging in what he knows were all the wrong places. Maybe this is his world as much as it’s always been his father’s.

“You’re gay, aren’t you?” Lionel asks, short and direct over the top of a martini glass. The name Peter is scribbled across her wrist like doctor’s scrawl, but she wears a lot of bracelets and bangles to try to cover it up. (Jude’s met Pete Davenport, so he doesn’t ask.)

“What makes you say that?”

“You don’t talk about dating,” she says with a shrug. “Or women. When you’re surrounded by straight men from day to day you learn to pick up some clues.”

“I think plenty of people would argue,” Jude says, before begrudgingly admitting, “But yeah, I’m gay.”

“Does your dad know?”

Jude puts his arm up, his shirt sleeve slipping down enough to expose his wristband. “What do you think?”

“I think that’s as big a clue as any.”

“Well, he’s never asked,” Jude says, and finishes what’s left of his drink. “I’ll take it as a win.”

“Oh that’s what _Devil’s_ do, honey.” Lionel gives him a lecherous grin. “Win, win, win.”

*

Jude warms up to Zero pretty fast. He’s got a quick wit and a gentle nature that always makes Jude feel comfortable. And while the whole bible-loving, small-town-boy image turns out to be mostly an act; it feels like he’s learnt enough of his own lessons to try harder. Be better.

Jude can admire that.

They’re good together, and it’s a no-brainer when Zero offers him the job as his manager. Jude’s doing well at the team, he’s making good money, but he always feels like something’s scratching at his skin. That he’s just on the edge of something, just needs a little more.

“You got a hot date?” Jude asks Zero from where he’s sprawled on the couch, watching him change his shirt.

“Yeah. Jelena.”

“You like her a lot, don’t you?” Jude sits up a little, the bourbon starting to weigh him down. In the low light Zero’s skin looks golden, looks almost like Jude fell asleep and dreamt him there. “Is she your soulmate?”

Zero pulls on a tee pretty fast then, turning to face Jude with a look. They’ve been friends just a short time but Jude’s getting good at reading him. And right now he’s closed off. “That’s a pretty personal question.”

“Sorry, sorry, that was rude.”

“Whatever,” he says, but it’s short, and insincere. “Are you sticking around here tonight or do you want me to drive you home?”

“Uh, can I,” Jude starts and then falls back down on the couch, curling up. “Can I just.”

“Yeah,” he hears Zero say, and he sounds like he might be smiling. “Stay there.”

*

Jude met a man called Gideon Sturt when he was only nineteen years old. Gideon was thirty-two, and a professor of something, and the most beautiful thing Jude had ever seen. Well, maybe he was, and maybe he wasn’t, and maybe Jude just liked the idea of him. He had the name _Asim_ on his wrist in Arabic but Jude didn’t care. He took Gideon home.

It filled Jude’s whole body with joy to hold onto him tight and shout his name as loud as he could. It made his skin thrum when Gideon pressed his mouth to Jude’s soul mark and whispered, _I’m sorry I can’t be him_.

It felt good, it felt so good.

He didn’t care.

“You need to stop telling people you’re my son,” Oscar says when Jude walks into his office. Whatever Jude was expecting – a new job role, an update on their finances, hell, _a pat on the back_ – it wasn’t that.

“What’s the problem?”

“I don’t have a son.”

The silence strikes so hard it hurts. Jude opens his mouth a few times, trying to work out what to say to that, but it’s just breath after breath to the point it’s almost panic. “You … I’m standing right here.”

“Who is? Jude Kinkade?” Oscar spits. “A bleeding heart homo that thought he could fly by on the skirt tails of a sperm donor? No. That’s not a son.”

“What was the point of having me here then, Oscar? When I came to you, when I told you what I wanted, you agreed.”

“That was before I went to visit you in your home and your neighbour was telling me about the company you keep.”

Jude scoffs. He’s slept with less than a hand full of men in all the time he’s been in L.A. to protect himself, his father, his team – and for this? “What a fucking joke. Welcome to the 21st Century.”

“If you want to keep your job you’ll shut your mouth and do as you’re told.”

“Don’t worry. You think you’re ashamed of _me_? That’s nothing compared to how I feel about you right now.” Jude goes to leave but stops at the door, remembering something he’d tried to forget. “Mom told me you never had a name on your wrist, that you never believed in soulmates. In _love_. I guess I didn’t think that would mean your family as well. Your flesh and blood.”

Jude’s so done he can’t even be bothered to slam the door.

_He doesn’t care._

*

Jude’s in pyjama pants and a ratty tee when Zero comes by, eyebrows flying up at the sight of him. Of course Zero looks like he just got off a runway, expensive clothes and slicked back hair and a smell that Jude recognises. Probably from a sponsor. Jude’s had a headache drilling into the back of his skull all morning – having Zero here seems to help dull the pain.

Something real, something tangible, something _his_.

“You’ve been pretty absent lately,” Zero says as he follows Jude into the house, closing the door behind him. Jude leads him through to the kitchen to put on the kettle, rummaging in the fridge for in-date milk.

“Yeah, I just needed some space. You got my email, right?”

“I got _something_. Not sure you’d call it all that informative.”

“Oh, right, informative,” Jude mocks. “Learning some big words while I’ve been gone.”

“You’re hilarious.” There’s quiet while Jude gets their coffee ready, the clink of a spoon the glug of the water. When he passes Zero his cup he’s surprised to hear him ask, “Is it about your soulmate?”

Jude pulls a face. “Uh, I wish. Why would you think …?”

“I don’t know, it’s just a thing, isn’t it?” Zero says with a shrug. “Most people moan about their soulmates and everyone just accepts it.”

“Right, well. It’s about Oscar.”

“Really? What happened?”

“Uh, well,” Jude starts, leaning against the kitchen bench and ducking his face to hide. Zero’s always been pretty easy going about things that aren’t basketball and money – Jude doesn’t think he’ll care. “He found out I’m gay and disowned me basically.”

“You’re _kidding_ ,” Zero shouts, and the sound of that alone is enough to calm Jude.

“No. He said if I told people I was his son I would have to leave the team.”

“What? He can’t do that!”

“Well he did,” Jude says with a sigh, and heads in to the next room. They sit down together on the sofa, knee to knee, and Jude curls his hands around his cup to keep them steady. “I mean, what does it matter? Like I want people to know now, now that he’s done this. No thanks.”

“That’s not the point. That’s blackmail. You should tell someone. Lionel. Jelena.”

“No. No. I’ll be happy if I never see his face again. Seriously.”

“So you’re leaving?”

“Of course I’m not. I just need to work out my next move. If I have something to fight him with then I don’t need to watch my back all the time. I can get on with doing what I love.”

They sit there, in silence, staring ahead. Zero’s generally going a hundred miles an hour – from game to game to shoot to shoot until he’s worn himself into the ground. But then he’s this Zero. Calm, strong, well meaning.

“Look, are you sure you’re okay? I mean, I can get you something if you want, something to eat, something - ”

Jude’s not sure why he does it. Zero’s so close, and so beautiful, and the only person in Jude’s life that doesn’t want him for anything. He leans in enough to press their mouths softly together, before feeling Zero freeze and hold back. “Shit, shit, shit,” Jude hisses, jumping up. “I don’t know why I did that, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Zero reassures him, holding up his hands and looking a little blindsided. “Don’t worry.”

“It’s not fine, I’m, you are, I’m just having a bad week, alright? I promise I’ll pull on my big boy pants tomorrow.”

“Okay.” Zero abandons his coffee on the table to go. “I’ll see you then.”

*

Jude gets his Private Investigator to start working on Oscar, before setting his focus on Zero. They’ve let things slip for a while – his popularity was down since breaking things off with Jelena and his performance on the court wasn’t so great either – and a lot of it was on Jude.

He was good at what he did, he knew. He was dogmatic, and thorough, and he didn’t let stupid things put him off. Stupid things like unloving fathers and fluttering crushes on straight men that were only trying to be his friend. He was better than that.

“What are you hoping to achieve here, Jude?” Lionel asks him, looking over documents that Jude had put together so far. “Do you want to send him to jail?”

“Who? Oscar?”

“No, Big Bird,” she drawled with the roll of her eyes.

“You think I have enough to get him arrested?”

“You’re well on your way. Is that the plan? Get rid of him and keep the _Devil’s_ for yourself?”

“No! Jesus, no, I don’t want the team. I have Zero. I have this,” Jude motions around the room. “It’s more than enough. I’m just trying to protect it.”

Lionel just gives him one of her worn down sighs, blowing out her lips for dramatic effect. He throws a pen at her, and she throws it back, and it’s close to dissolving in an all out war before the secretary buzzes in to let him know there’s someone here to see him.

“This isn’t over,” he tells Lionel with a grin, but she just pulls a face at him and straightens up her skirt.

Outside his door, Luca – a young guy that was working on one of Zero’s photo-shoots the other day – is standing with his hands in his pockets and looking nervous as hell. He’d given Jude his number, which had been flattering, but with everything else that had been going on Jude didn’t think he had time for men as well. When had he ever?

“Luca.”

“Hi,” he says, big brown eyes and dimpled cheek. “I was hoping you had time to get a coffee.”

*

Jude’s never been with any one for longer than a few months. He’d felt slighted by the name on his wrist for so long that he’d started to become embittered about the whole thing. Love, and destiny, and fairytales. You couldn’t turn a corner without soulmates being thrown into your face. On TV, in magazines, even in sport.

It felt stupid to hang onto something, to love someone, when that had already been dictated. It felt stupid to play a part in someone else’s show.

“Uh, hi,” Jude says hurriedly when Zero shows up at his door. He’s scrounging around for a tie before he has to go and meet Luca for dinner – he feels stupid enough without Zero there, scrutinising. “Can this wait? I’m in a hurry to get somewhere.”

“It’s important, actually,” Zero insists, and it’s the kind of insistence that he usually reserves for the game. For a win. Jude falters.

Things had been a little tense lately – what with Jude coming out  to Zero and making a move on him in quick succession – Jude wanted to prove that he really was here for Zero in every way. As his manager, as his friend.

“Alright,” he says slowly, opening the door a little wider. “Come in, I’ll just be a minute.”

Jude finally finds a nice blue tie tucked in the back of his closet, and as he throws it around his neck in an attempt to get it tied up, he goes back out to meet Zero. He’s just standing there, in the middle of the room, as though he doesn't know waht to do with himself.

“What’s wrong?”

“You’ve got a date.”

“Yeah?” Jude is still fumbling with his tie, trying to spin it around, tuck it under. “I thought I told you? Why, has something happened?”

“No, I – here - ” Zero steps in quickly to grab at Jude’s tie, pulling it free of his hands. They’re suddenly as close as they were the day Jude kissed him, and it sucks all the air out of Jude’s lungs; he sweats.

“Since when did you learn to do this?” Jude asks shakily, watching Zero’s face as if it might give something away. It doesn’t. He won’t look up. He barely moves.

“I didn’t,” Zero says, before pulling Jude’s tie off completely. He holds it loose in a hand, still not making eye contact. “I just – you need to listen to me, okay?”

“Okay?”

“I – you can’t go out with this guy. You barely know him.”

“That’s the point of dating,” Jude says stupidly, feeling like he’s been hit by a bus. Been hit with a sudden understanding. Zero’s here to … to what? _Claim_ him? “Just because I kissed you - ”

“Why _did_ you kiss me?” Zero asks, and it’s almost pleading, his hands swooping out as if he can catch the answers. “Why, because I’m good looking, or, or - ”

“Seriously? You’re not the only good looking person in this town, Zero.”

“Then why?”

“Because I like you!” Jude shouts, not completely sure why he’s so angry right now but too stubborn to let it go. “A lot! You’re probably the best friend I’ve ever had which, you know, sounds pathetic considering I barely know you at all but - ”

Zero cuts him off with a kiss, a hand strong against Jude’s face, cradling him close. Jude opens his mouth for it, groans into it, and forgets why he was going to argue about this in the first place. It’s wet and rough and they’re crashing against all the surfaces of Jude’s house, until they finally find the sofa to lay down on.

“Wait, wait,” Jude grits out between kisses, trying to dig into his pocket for his phone.

“You don’t want this?”

“No, no, I mean yes, _fuck_ , I just – I just need to cancel my date.”

*

Jude knows Zero pretty well. He knows about his career, and his accolades, and how he’s disgusted by pineapple on pizza. He knows that he’s never had a serious relationship, and that he once snuck into a Rolling Stones concert, and that there is nothing he hates more than losing a game of basketball.

Jude knows Zero’s superstitious rituals before a game, and after a game, and what he needs to do to unwind and recover from a loss.

He does know Zero. It was just never enough.

This – Zero in his bed and across his body and inside of him – feel right in a way he can’t explain. They kiss until it hurts too much and fuck until they have nothing left and it’s exhausting, right down to his bones, but Jude just wants, wants, wants. It’s never been like this before, sex, like a fever you can’t sweat out.

“You seem … invested,” Lionel says, bored, from where they’re watching the _Devil’s_ play courtside. Jude pulls a face at her.

“It’s our team.”

“Yes, but, you’re more invested than usual.”

“This game’s important for Zero. You know that.”

“Honestly, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. People love him.”

“Yeah,” Jude says softly, watching Zero move up the court and assist another player with a shot. He’s transfixed, hooked, like all Zero needs to do is pull and he’d be there. “They do.”

When the siren sounds later, and the _Devil’s_ have made their way into the playoffs, Jude watches the whole team celebrate. He watches Zero hug them all and cheer and talk to reporter after reporter with a grin on his face like Jude has never seen.

Jude watches, and watches, and waits.

Zero never comes to him.

*

Jude doesn’t mean to drive Oscar out, but he’s not sad to see him go. He equips Jelena with everything she needs to take over – insisting he and Zero are safe on the team for the indefinite future. It’s funny to think he came all this way for Oscar, only to get rid of Oscar and take everything else instead.

Success, wealth, friends.

Zero’s there every other night. No pretence, no folly – he traps Jude against walls, smothers him with his body, and fucks him like there’s nothing else in the world he’d rather be doing. Jude knows what it is, he knows it can’t go anywhere, but he can never seem to say no. He’s possessed.

“You never talk about your family,” Jude says to him when they’re watching TV on the sofa, bowls of ice-cream in their laps and sock-toed.

“I don’t have any.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

Zero just shrugs at him, his eye firmly ahead on the screen and jaw clenched. “It is what it is.”

“So don’t you…” Jude starts, hesitant to start the conversation but certain that he needs to. “Wouldn’t you want to find your soulmate?”

It’s instantaneous. Jude can feel Zero tense all over, the air suddenly thick with the unsaid. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I just mean – if you could find them, if you could make a real go of it, wouldn’t you want to?”

“Do you know how many girls have sent pictures to me with Zero written on their wrist in Sharpie?” Zero bites back, abandoning his ice-cream as if he’s lost his appetite. “You think that’s real? Huh? And what about you, without Oscar, without your mom - ”

“I was just asking, Zero! I just want what’s best for you.”

“What’s best for _Zero_?” he asks bitterly, shaking his head as if that’s a ridiculous suggestion. Jude had always assumed his past was sketchy, and it feels like it’s all suddenly coming unravelled right here, at Jude’s feet. “ _Fuck_. Zero’s not even my name.”

“It’s not?”

“Of course not! It’s the name my deadbeat foster family used to tease me with. They thought I was nothing, zero. So I took it. I _owned_ it.”

“What’s your real name?” Jude hears himself say, and his voice gets caught on it, the words rushing loud in his ears. Real name, his _real name_ , what had Jude been thinking? “Zero…”

“It’s Gideon.”

Jude’s wrist seems to burn hot and sudden as he jumps from the sofa, his bowl scattering to the floor. “You _knew_?” he yells, turning on Zero where he’s hunched on his seat. He’s all bent in on himself, his elbows on his knees, like _he’s_ vulnerable, _he’s_ hurt, when Jude’s the one who’s been lied to. “You’ve known all this time and you - ”

“Of course I didn’t know! How could I? You’ve got that thing covered when you _sleep_ , how am I supposed to …”

“Fuck, I’ve been so stupid. Of course it’s you, it all makes sense now.”

“It does?”

“What, you don’t feel it? I’ve felt it from the start. I don’t get close to people, I don’t have friends and then suddenly you’re there, you’re …”

When he looks at Zero again, properly, his face is stone cold. His lips are pursed into a thin line, impenetrable, distant.

“You don’t feel it?” he asks in a small voice, and Zero’s silence is all the answer he needs.

Jude’s mom died and his father disowned him, it makes sense his soulmate would be the same.

Jude’s just not worth sticking around for.

*

Jude had gotten high one night, hooked up with some guy called Toby and made him write _Gideon_ over every inch of Jude’s body. It had been funny at first, flirtatious and tickling and stupid. They’d had sex again, gotten a little dirty, until Jude was smeared in black ink and shame and was crying into his pillow.

“It’s okay, man,” Toby had said, holding Jude, because Toby was a nice guy. Jude didn’t deserve him. (He hoped _Pippa_ did, wherever she was.) “One day.”

It’s weird to think that today is that day. That if he calls Toby right now and tells him he met his Gideon, that they may laugh, and that it may be good. Even if it wasn’t meant to be, even if he’s not Jude’s happily ever after, even he can never write his name all over Zero’s body like a mantra: _mine, mine, mine_. It’s still good.

He found him.

“You’re just leaving, just like that?” Lionel protests, standing in the middle of Jude’s room holding his underwear. They’re surrounded by boxes and shrapnel, Jude hurrying to put together what’s left and find another journey.

“There’s nothing left for me here,” Jude tells her, snatching his briefs from her and throwing them into a box.

“Uh, me, the team, your _livelihood_?”

“Look, I don’t mean – I love you Lionel, but I can’t see him every day knowing …”

Lionel heaves a heavy sigh and starts picking things up off the ground. “The next time I see that guy he better be wearing a cup, I swear to God.”

She helps him for a little while, until her back starts hurting and her nails start splitting and she’d rather go get a drink. He promises to join her a little later, as a farewell, because he just needs to be done with all of this so that he can escape.

“When are you going?” Zero asks from where he’s hovering in the doorway. Jude almost falls over, shocked, cursing himself for giving Zero the spare key.

“Jesus,” he mutters, throwing a cushion into any random box. “I don’t know. Tomorrow. The next day.”

“Can’t we just talk?”

“What’s there to talk about? You don’t want me.”

“Of course I do!” Zero protests, moving further into the room. Jude can smell him, feel the pull of him, and he can’t believe after all this time he never noticed that. The affect. “What do you think I’ve been doing?”

“I think you’ve been getting laid and not having to commit to anything.”

“Oh, like you weren’t doing that too?”

“No!” Jude stops distracting himself with the boxes and turns to Zero angrily. “I love you, and I want to be with you, and I don’t care what anyone else thinks, I don’t care who knows. Can you say the same?”

Zero drops his head. “It’s different for me,” he says in a small voice. “I’ll lose sponsors, I’ll lose fans.”

“I’m your soulmate!”

“So? What does that mean, really? That you’ll love me forever? Because I’ve met plenty of people who were soulmates and didn’t stay together.”

“So you - ”

“My mom didn’t love me,” Zero goes on, gathering steam. “My foster parents never loved me, I don’t even _know_ where my sister is. So what’s that, Jude, what do you risk for _that_?”

“I don’t know,” Jude says with a sigh, turning away again to pack up what’s left of his life. “More than what you’re willing to, I guess.”

“Jude, please.”

“No. I’m not going to settle for some of you. I want all of you. And if you can’t give it to me then, well, have a nice life.”

Jude didn’t even hear the front door close.

*

Jude’s got no plans other than a U-Haul and a plane to JFK. He knows a guy from college that had always promised to ‘pay him back’ for the time Jude got him out of a petty misdemeanour; so he’s hoping to be able to line something up with him. He’s got a bit of money behind him, and an apartment lined up, and it’s not what he wants, he knows that, but it’s all he’s got.

And he’s had worse.

“Jude - ” Lionel tries to say when he takes a call from her. He’s sitting on the floor surrounded by his boxes with a headache the size of a small island. In one of these boxes is a sweater Zero left behind, in another there’s a photo of them at a Lakers game, and another there’s clippings Jude kept with the thought he’d turn them into a scrapbook.

“Lionel, I told you, I’m not - ”

“Turn the TV on to Channel 5,” she cuts in, hissing and firm. “ _Right now_.”

“But I - ”

“ _Do it_.”

When the screen clicks on there’s footage of Zero playing at last week’s game with a reporters voice dubbed over the top.

 _In a shocking turn of events_ , she says, her voice lilting and fun. _The L.A Devils’ Zero – who was supposed to be making an announcement regarding his future with the team - has come out as bisexual today when he stepped out without his soul band_.

Jude falls onto the sofa to see Zero come into sight. He looks good, smart, dressed in his ‘I’m Serious About My Career’ clothes and surrounded by a swarm of microphones and voices.

“I’ve come to talk to you all because I may have lost my soulmate for good, and I want to make amends.”

 _While Zero was not showing the camera his markings_ , the reporter went on, _The small forward was not hiding from the truth._

“My soulmate is a man, and he knows who he is. But I didn’t have the courage to admit the truth and he couldn’t stop his life to wait or me. I’m hoping he will see me here, today, and know that I’m ready to face the world. With him.”

_Rumours suggest that Zero’s soulmate is none other than Jude Kinkade, Zero’s former manager who recently resigned from the Devil’s to pursue other ambitions._

“My soulmate hasn’t seen my mark yet, so I’m not going to show it to any of you,” was all Zero had to say to the camera, giving them all his trademark grin.

Jude feels a tear track down over his fingers, his face cradled in his hands.

He laughs.

*

 _Gideon_ has a scar along his hip, thick and stitched like rope. He tells Jude about being a kid and getting stuck in some chain link fencing. He tells him about the cute nurse at the hospital and the hot doctor who stitched him up. He tells him a lot of things, story upon story gushing out – like he’d been taught to close it up like a dam and Jude had finally broken the cracks.

He was free to be Gideon at last.

“Did you hate it, as a kid?” Jude asks when he holds Gideon’s arm in both hands, traces his lips along the curves of his mark. “Having my name?”

“I guess so. I always knew I wanted to be a big star and I thought it would hold me back.”

“I hated mine too, for a long time.”

“What changed?”

“I realised I’d become so lonely fighting against the idea of you, when I could have been happy just with the thought of you.”

“I’m sorry I fucked that up.”

“You didn’t,” Jude promises, pushing at Gideon when he scoffs. “No, you didn’t. Not for long anyway.”

Gideon gets Jude onto his back, kisses him slow and wet and runs a teasing hand across his skin, making him shudder. His fingers pause at Jude’s ribs, tracing the tattoo there reverently.

“I never asked about this. Who?”

“My mom. She – she was my whole world, you know? It made sense for me to keep that going.”

“I like that. She was your soulmate too, in a way.”

“Yeah,” Jude agrees, placing his own hand over Gideon’s, smiling. “You know she used to talk about you. About how she’d have us over for dinner, and dance with you out on the deck, and make you promise her that you’d take care of me. Of both of us.”

Gideon’s smile falls just a little, soft and open and real. “I’m sorry I never got the chance.”

“So am I.”

“But I would have,” Gideon tells him, and he’s ducking in for another kiss, moving closer for more. “I’ll always take care of you.”

Jude wraps his legs around Gideon tight, grabs fistfuls of skin and hair and whatever he can reach. “Mine,” he says, finally, breathless from the truth of it. They’re soulmates, he’s _Jude’s_ soulmate, and they’re never going back.

There’s no zeroes any more.

“ _Gideon_.”

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr!](http://thefancyspin.tumblr.com)


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